Road Safety Bill [Lords] - Standing Committee A

[Sir Nicholas Winterton in the Chair]

Road Safety Bill [Lords]

Owen Paterson: On a point of order, Sir Nicholas. Would it be possible for you to ask the relevant officials to make available copies of the Road Traffic Act 1988 and the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988? As we go through the Bill, we will find that it gets fiendishly complicated, and it would be helpful if we could have hard copies to use during the debate.

Alistair Carmichael: Further to that point of order, Sir Nicholas. I would like to associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson). I have served on Committees considering similar Bills in the past, where it has been of immense service to have copies available of the statute being amended. In passing, I notice that the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 also features from time to time, but as the hon. Gentleman says, the principal statutes that we are dealing with are the two 1988 Acts.

Greg Knight: Further to that point of order, Sir Nicholas. I may be able to help to a small extent in that I have a copy of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, having foreseen the problems that have been identified, and I am quite willing to lend it to other Committee members.

Stephen Ladyman: Further to that point of order, Sir Nicholas.

Nicholas Winterton: I was going to suggest from the Chair that the Minister will have heard the points of order raised. Being entirely unbiased, I can only say that it would be helpful to Members of all parties if hard copies of the Acts mentioned, including the Road Traffic Act 1998 and the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 in particular, were made available to all members of the Committee, including the Chairman.

Stephen Ladyman: The problem we have is that there has never been a reprinted version of the Road Traffic Act 1988 to take into account all the amendments that have been made since it took effect. It may be difficult to be helpful to the Committee. I will certainly ask my officials to do their best, but it may be necessary for hon. Members to avail themselves of the House of Commons Library and “Halsbury’s Statutes”, a copy of which my Parliamentary Private Secretary has availed himself of.

Nicholas Winterton: Following up the Minister’s comments, I am confident that electronic copies of the Acts are available. It should be up to the Department to make copies available to Committee members and I am sure that the Minister, even if his officials are second hand in this arena, will have heard what I said. The availability of an updated Act in both cases, perhaps provided electronically to hon. Members, would be very helpful to the future progress of the Bill.
When we broke for lunch, the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight) was on his feet, and I ask him to resume his brief remarks.

Clause 3 - Graduated fixed penalties

Question proposed [this day], That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Question again proposed.

Greg Knight: I was reflecting on what we are letting ourselves in for if we accept clause 3. Will the Minister give us some idea of the scope and nature of the orders that will flow from the clauses 3 and 4? I have no difficulty at all with the status quo, whereby a police officer trained in the rules of evidence can give out a fixed penalty ticket in certain circumstances where he feels that an offence has been committed. The clause breaks new ground, however, in that an element of flexibility has been introduced. To some extent, that will lead to a subtle shift in the behaviour of the police in which they will move from being mere enforcers of the law to acting to some extent as a judge of the situation. As I understand it officers will, for the first time, have the precise level of sentence in their own hands.
Although I support the principle of flexibility, I am just a little concerned about how such provision will operate in practice. Will the police officer carry in his car or in a box on his bike a range of tickets with different penalties? Or will he have a box to tick when he fills out the ticket for a motorist who he believes has committed an offence? Is the heat of the moment the best time for the police officer to make that judgment? There is a real risk that where a motorist who has been stopped for an offence is truculent or bellicose, the police officer may decide to ratchet up the level of penalty, although the offence does not warrant it, merely because he has experienced a degree of friction with the motorist.
Hitherto, the Government attitude has been that the motorist can take it or leave it; he can accept what is in the fixed penalty ticket or he can go to court. However, that answer is not entirely satisfactory. Has the Minister considered that point? If not, will he do so before the orders are made? Is there not a case for having the police officer issue an open ticket—a ticket recording the offence and inviting the motorist to tell the officer what mitigating circumstances there are, if any? Within 14 days of such a ticket being issued, someone else in authority could decide what grading the ticket should have. A person behind a desk seeing both the facts as alleged by the police officer and any  comments in mitigation by the motorist would be better placed to determine the grading. I wonder whether the Minister has reflected on that possibility.
Clearly, we do not want motorists arguing by the side of the road with a police officer. We do not want motorists saying, “No, I should be graded down one,” and the officer saying, “No, I think that you should be graded higher.” I wonder whether a system in which that is done at base will remove the risk. The police officer could simply issue a ticket and say, “Within 14 days you will know full details of the impact of the ticket. Is there anything that you want to say?” That could be fairer, and it is more likely to be just. If the motorist decides at the end of the day to take the matter to court, the prosecution will make great play with asking, “What did the defendant say when the accusation was first put to him? What did he say in answer to the allegation?” The prosecution will not ask, “What is he saying now, in court?” If the motorist is invited to have his say there and then, when he is stopped by the police officer, and the police officer puts that in his notebook, it is more likely to lead to a just outcome.
Those concerns are relevant to cases in which the ticket is issued by a police officer, but how much more relevant are they when the scope is widened, as the Minister said, and a non-police officer issues the ticket? What if it is issued by a vehicle examiner who has no experience or knowledge of the rules of evidence? Should not he be encouraged to note down what the driver has to say at the time of the offence, before the grading of the penalty is determined?

Stephen Ladyman: The intention is not that that flexibility should exist at the roadside. The flexibility will exist when we come to make the order in Parliament. That order should prescribe the circumstances in which a motorist will get a particular type of penalty. In other words, if the officer stops a motorist at the roadside, the officer should be in a position to say, “You were doing 45 mph in an area with a 30 mph speed limit, and I am able to offer a fixed penalty for that. The fixed penalty is this, because that is what Parliament has prescribed for these circumstances.” That will be the level of flexibility.
Having said that, I can see some merit in what the right hon. Gentleman suggests, in that perhaps the appropriate thing is for the policeman to just say, “This is the offence I’ve stopped you for, and you will hear within a period of time as to whether we’re going to offer you a fixed penalty, and what it will be.” I shall reflect on the matter and confirm what I say later, but to the best of my knowledge, a policeman would not be prevented from taking that course of action if it were the view of the local constabulary that that was how it wanted to issue tickets. The flexibility will come when we make the order in Parliament, and we will prescribe the precise circumstances at that stage.
I accept what the right hon. Gentleman says about the fact that if somebody is belligerent at the roadside, there may be a temptation for the policeman to ramp up the penalty. That will almost certainly not be a circumstance that Parliament would want to cover in the order. In such circumstances, the policeman’s  response should be to say “Okay then, there will be no fixed penalty. We’ll take you to court, and I’ll be explaining to the magistrate how you have behaved.”
I have a childhood memory of my brother driving a car, with my uncle in the passenger seat. My brother was stopped by a policeman, and my uncle kept repeating to my brother, “Humble pie, humble pie,” to keep him calm while the policeman told him off. In the end the policeman sent him on his way, so my advice to any motorist who is stopped by a policeman in future is, “Plenty of humble pie; listen carefully to what the officer has to say and learn from it, and maybe that will serve you well.”
I repeat, however, that the flexibility will arise from making the order in Parliament that will prescribe the circumstances in which a penalty will be available.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 4 - Graduated fixed penalty points

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Owen Paterson: Will the Minister clarify where we stand on the system of graduated penalties? This morning, he mentioned the guidelines produced by the Association of Chief Police Officers, which refer to an excess speed of 10 per cent. plus two that we should be reached before an offence kicks in, but we are debating these matters against the background of a spectacular increase in motoring offences. The latest figures that I have are for 2003, in which the number of motoring offences dealt with by the police in which a penalty was charged is 13.2 million, which is up 15 per cent. on the 2002 level and is the highest number ever recorded. I understand that that trend has continued, and that the number of motoring offences dealt with by fixed penalty notices, including those issued by traffic wardens, was 3.6 million, which is up 27 per cent. on 2002. There were 2.3 million court proceedings for motoring offences during 2003, which is up 9 per cent. on 2002.
Speed cameras, our friends of this morning, provide the evidence for 1.9 million offences that were dealt with—93 per cent. of speeding offences. There are now up to 5,000 camera sites and the number is growing. The result is that whereas there was previously some flexibility, there is now the rigidity of the camera system. The Government published what we thought was a consultation document, but we were told that it was a discussion document. In relation to the 30 mph limit, it was proposed that there would be a schedule of lower penalty points: two points plus a £40 fine at 39 mph, a standard penalty of three points from 40 to 44 mph and a higher penalty of six points at 45 mph.
Without rehearsing this morning’s arguments on penalty points, which were similar, I can say that we welcome the flexibility to allow for conditions. I am intrigued, however, by how the system will work if ACPO adheres to an excess of 10 per cent. plus two,  which I believe is sensible. Indeed, some major newspaper reports appeared over the weekend saying that some police monitoring devices are not accurate. It is therefore sensible to have some flexibility about the speed that is being prosecuted, aside from taking into account the circumstances.
We said in previous debates and in the House of Lords that we were not happy that proposed new subsection (3A) to section 28 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 states that all these matters will be decided in a separate debate on a statutory instrument. It would be better for us to have the debate now so that it is on the record and so that all the parties can hear the Government’s thinking.
The Government’s proposals have support outside the House. The RAC Foundation is a respected organisation that has a great deal of knowledge and which has done a great deal of research on the subject. It stated that while it appreciated that all speeding could be dangerous, it supported the graduated penalty system. It believes that the level of punishment needs to fit the crime, and that a range of penalty points may in fact discourage people from excessive speeding. The greatest reduction in road casualties would come from reducing the speeds of faster drivers—a point that we discussed this morning. The foundation states that there is no evidence to suggest that a graduated system would encourage motorists to drive just above the limit, as two penalty points are still a strong deterrent to speeding. So there is support from respectable bodies outside the House.
My party supports graduated penalty points because of the variability and flexibility that they give, but I would like a clear idea from the Minister as to whether he has a schedule in mind that might be debated at a future stage in a Statutory Instrument Committee. Would it not be better for him to debate it now and tell us how the ACPO ruling will affect it?

Alistair Carmichael: As I understand the clause, the existing floor for penalty points—the minimum that is normally imposed—of three is to be removed, and there will be greater variation. I believe that that will apply in all parts of the United Kingdom. Can the Minister tell me what consultation he has had with the Scottish Executive? As the statutory instruments under the proposed new subsection will apply in Scotland, the Executive will be responsible for them. The challenge for the Government, wherever they are, is that the certainty that exists with the three-point minimum will be lost, as it will be possible to have different rates north and south of the border. That is an undesirable development.

Stephen Ladyman: The Government will take this power if the Committee and, ultimately, the House agree. As the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) said, the Bill does not include the detail of how graduation will work. That is a matter for the future. I can understand why he would want to have some sort  of debate on it now, but such a debate would have to be fairly superficial. It will be held in much more detail when the time comes to lay an order.
For the hon. Gentleman’s information, clause 3 penalties—that is, matters to do with money—will be subject to a negative resolution, and orders under clause 4 will be subject to an affirmative resolution. The reason for the difference is that we regard penalty points as more serious than sums of money, as they can ultimately lead to the loss of one’s licence and possibly even one’s livelihood. If someone loses their licence but carries on driving, they can even be imprisoned. As that issue is clearly more serious, there will have to be a debate in this place before an order is made.
What sort of things do we have in mind? On 1 September 2004, we published an outline of what we think might be appropriate, and we opened that up to consultation. We shall review the feedback from that consultation, if the Bill is passed. We will suggest another set of proposals based on that consultation and then move to further consultation and an order. My promise to the hon. Gentleman is that there will be thorough consultation before we make the order.
How will the proposals mesh with the ACPO guidance? First, in England and Wales, enforcement guidance from ACPO is discretionary. The situation is different in Scotland, where I understand the Lord Advocate sets the enforcement guidelines and the police have no discretion. Let us assume for the purposes of debate that the ACPO guidance is in operation in England and Wales and let us take the 30 mph figure that the hon. Gentleman has given us. The proposal that we took out to consultation was that, in a 30 mph zone, there should be a lower penalty of two points and £40 up to 39 mph; a standard penalty of three points and £60 between 40 and 44 mph; and a higher penalty of six points and a £100 fine for 45 mph.
If we overlay the ACPO guidance, I envisage no charge being made between 30 and 35 mph, because that is ACPO’s enforcement guideline. However, should a person exceed the speed limit at more than 50 mph, the opportunity to offer a higher penalty of six points and £100 will lapse and the person will be taken to court, because that is where ACPO guidance sets the higher level of court enforcement. Therefore, I envisage the order that the House ultimately passes will be overlaid by the ACPO guidance.
I can tell the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) that discussions on all aspects of the Bill have taken place with the Scottish Executive. The instruments will be dealt with not in Scotland but in Westminster, as they are for the whole of Great Britain. This is a reserved matter that will be dealt with in that way.
I hope that I have answered the questions put by the hon. Member for North Shropshire and that he will agree that clause 4 should stand part of the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 4 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 17 - Penalty points

Owen Paterson: I beg to move amendment No. 55, in clause 17, page 21, line 25, leave out ‘“2-6’ and insert ‘“1-6’.

Nicholas Winterton: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 88, in clause 17, page 21, line 29, leave out from ‘substitute’ to end of line 30 and insert
‘3-6 or appropriate penalty points if committed in respect of a speed limit on a restricted road; 2-6 (fixed penalty) in other cases”, and
“restricted road” in paragraph () means a road defined as restricted in section 82 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 (c. 27).’.
No. 56, in clause 17, page 21, line 29, leave out ‘“2-6’ and insert ‘“1-6’.
New clause 13—HGV speed limits—
‘In Schedule 6 to the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 (speed limits for vehicles of certain classes), in paragraph 5(2)(b)(iii) column (c) leave out “40” and insert “50”.’.

Owen Paterson: I do not want to delay the Committee by making the same points as were made in the previous debate, because the clause centres on flexibility and variation according to circumstances. The Government propose points of two to six, and amendment No. 55 proposes points of one to six, giving even more flexibility to allow circumstances to be taken into account.
An interesting report published last week suggested that 1 million drivers are now on six or more licence points. Perhaps the matter has been rather dramatically put, but it has been said that, as there is a chance of getting six points on any speeding offence, some people are only one flash away from losing their licence completely. I think that we would all agree that people should not be driving so fast that they get six points, but a large number of people who have been caught—I think mainly because of the big increase in speed cameras—are now reaching the point where their driving is affected: they are so paranoid about being caught by a speed camera that they are concentrating on the cameras rather than on their driving technique, although I have only anecdotal evidence of that.

Tom Harris: I should rise to declare the same interest that I declared on Second Reading: I am one these many millions of drivers with six points. Knowing that every mile I drive I am on the verge of losing my licence, which would happen if I were caught speeding again, I concentrate not on the location of speed cameras, but on keeping my speed below the legal limit. I am sure that that experience is common to others in my situation.

Owen Paterson: That was a helpful contribution. One feels for the hon. Gentleman and we should wish him good luck with cautious driving. Perhaps he will shortly endorse our proposal about detection devices, but I will not test your patience on that, Sir Nicholas.
We are all citing our friends and family histories, as well as horrible incidents yesterday on the M6. Much of this is anecdotal, but people have been telling me that as they have reached six points, they are under pressure and are really worried about it. As the Minister said, their lives, careers and jobs may depend on having a driving licence. Our proposal is quite simple. We have done to death the idea of flexibility and attention to the conditions surrounding the circumstances of being stopped and we propose just a little more flexibility to go from one to six.
On new clause 13, there is a slight change in subject. The purpose of the new clause is simple. We have had a considerable number of representations from the commercial trucking industry saying that there would be sense in increasing the speed of heavy goods vehicles on single-lane main roads from 40 mph to 50 mph. I have completely failed to establish where the 40 mph limit originated. That is the first problem. It seems to be ancestral. I can find no evidence on why it was established, but those in the industry think that it was introduced many years ago when vehicle technology was quite different, anti-lock braking systems did not exist and suspension systems were different.
We have established that about 50 per cent. of accidents are caused on single-lane roads, and they tend to be head-on collisions. Again, the evidence is anecdotal. Many car drivers do not understand that heavy goods vehicles are limited to 40 mph. The trucking industry believes that frustrated drivers are queuing up behind trucks and then choosing inappropriate moments to try to dash past them. On roads such as the A9 in Scotland, the A5 near me and the A41 that can be quite dangerous. There is a clear case for considering increasing the speed of heavy goods vehicles.

Tom Harris: I have two quick points to make. It seems a very radical measure to base on purely anecdotal evidence. Secondly—the hon. Gentleman has been given notice of this question because I asked it of his Front Bench colleagues on Second Reading—can he name a single country in the world where an increase in the speed limit has led to a consequent reduction in road fatalities?

Owen Paterson: Yes, I am talking trucks. There is evidence in the United States, from states such as Montana. When the limits imposed during the fuel crisis in the 1970s were lifted, there was an improvement in the accident rate.

Rosemary McKenna: Surely the hon. Gentleman cannot compare roads in Montana or any other American state to the roads in Orkney, or to the A9 in particular, which he mentioned.

Owen Paterson: I am touched that the hon. Lady queries my reply to a straight question from her hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris).  He asked whether I had evidence, I said yes and I gave it. I do not want to upset her, but I am going to give her some more evidence from America.
I considered two studies of changes in traffic; one from the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration, and the other from the Wyoming legislative service office. They show that when trucking limits were devolved, certain states maintained a differential speed limit, with one speed for trucks and another for cars, and others maintained a uniform speed limit, with the same speed for cars and trucks. For example, Arkansas had a differential speed limit, keeping cars at 70 mph and trucks at 65 mph. Idaho was uniform; it went for 75 mph for all vehicles.
The evidence from the federal report is, bluntly, that the changes did not make much difference. It is not absolutely clear from the study whether they made any difference. The problem with that study and the Wyoming study is that we are talking about interstates, which are the same as our motorways, with traffic flowing in the same direction; interestingly, there has been no dramatic change either way under either regime.

Sally Keeble: Is not the hon. Gentleman’s point that accident rates are not entirely dependent on speed limits? We know that in this country, because some of the roads that he mentioned, which in Northamptonshire, too, have high accident rates, do not have good lighting. They are rural roads. Many other factors must be taken into account, and he is not making an argument against the speeding issue at all.

Owen Paterson: I am touched that the hon. Lady was listening so carefully to our debate this morning. That is exactly what we were saying: circumstances and conditions decide accidents; it is not pure speed. All I am saying is that I could find no real evidence of any research in this country, and all I could dig out was some stuff from the United States. Her hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South queried whether I had any evidence, and I am giving the evidence that uniform and differential speed limits have made no huge difference either way. That was the lesson from the Wyoming legislative service office study.

Tom Harris: I apologise for interrupting the hon. Gentleman’s flow, because I am enjoying it. However, if the surveys and international comparisons from which he quotes conclude that there is no real difference one way or the other, and they suggest that a change will not improve road safety records, why does he argue for change—albeit accepting that it would not make them any worse?

Owen Paterson: That is exactly my point. I expected people from his point of view to be popping up, saying, “It is a scandalum magnatum to be talking about increasing any speeds at all.” My point is that from the international studies I am citing, change did not make any great difference either way. The studies are inconclusive, and that is an important point.
It is worth listening to the industry professionals. It is perfectly fair to listen to them, because they have to live with the situation every day and hear from their drivers. Again, we run into our dear old friends, the speed cameras. I suspect that for years, as motors have got more powerful and drivers have developed more confidence in their braking systems, drivers have been going over 40 mph. Now they are being clocked more frequently by speed cameras, which make no distinction in relation to the conditions we rattled through this morning. That is becoming a real problem for the industry.
The industry is convinced that drivers, whose jobs depend on this, are now being really careful; I cannot think of anyone who is more dependent on a clean licence than a commercial truck driver. They are now being ultra-prudent, which is frustrating car drivers who then overtake on single-lane roads at inappropriate moments. I received a letter from Roger King, the chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, which says:
“HGVs are limited by law to a maximum of 40 mph on such roads. In fact custom and practice usually meant 50 mph as trucks sought to go with the flow of prevailing traffic. With the advent of speed cameras close observance of the limit is required, although with a theoretical grace of 10 per cent. plus 2 mph added on, enforcement is carried out at speeds over 46 mph. While such generosity is appreciated any slight excess of 46 mph, and we are talking about something like 46.3 mph here, will end in a fine and endorsement.
No one can condone lawbreaking. However, 40 mph on a well engineered A road sets the truck up as a mobile obstacle followed by other motorists frustrated at the slow progress being made. This often ends in dangerous overtaking manoeuvres.
Today’s HGV with up to 16 forward speeds, or highly sensitive automatic gearboxes do not operate efficiently at such low speeds, moving at a lower gear speed and thus less fuel efficient. 50 mph is an optimum speed conducive to efficiency. With modern disc brake systems and air suspension the stopping ability is more than adequate.”
That point is endorsed by the Freight Transport Association, which also picked up on the point about pollution. Chris Welsh of the FTA sent me a note and, on the question of pollution, said:
“This is a complex and somewhat imprecise issue but our vehicle engineers and scientists estimate that where an operator can use the higher speed limits on down hill sections of the road to conserve energy on the uphill sections that by keeping the speed within green band of the rev counter there is a potential fuel saving of approximately 3.7 per cent. If the rev counter goes into the red zone fuel consumption increases dramatically.”
He continues:
“A 3.7 per cent. fuel saving on a 500 litre tank of diesel represents an 18.5 per cent. fuel saving with the corresponding savings in emissions of PM10 ... and NOX.”
Our contention is that the limit was set in the mists of time and truck technology has moved on. The advent of speed cameras has meant that truck drivers are now being extra cautious and are adhering very strictly to the 40 mph limit. That is leading to car drivers getting frustrated and an increase in head-on collisions when car drivers overtake at inappropriate moments on single-lane roads. There would be an efficiency gain and a safety gain if the speed limit for HGVs were increased from 40 to 50 mph.

Tom Harris: I want to make a few brief comments in response to the thoughtful and interesting comments made by the hon. Member for North Shropshire. I declare another interest: my father was an HGV driver for most of his working life. Fortunately, he was never involved in a serious accident despite the fact that he drove for his whole life with a very severe handicap because he had only one eye. Now is perhaps not the time to go into detail about the hours of fun my brothers and I used to have with the spare glass eyes in the sideboard when he was away driving long distance. He obviously took his job as an HGV driver extremely seriously and was an extremely careful driver, but I have to take issue with what the hon. Gentleman said about HGV drivers being extra cautious these days.
At the start of the debate we heard from the Minister about his near-death experience on the M6 yesterday, when the vehicle he mentioned as having caused the accident was, unsurprisingly, an HGV. I would be interested at some point during these proceedings if we could have a figure from the Minister about the number of motorway accidents in particular that have been caused by HGVs rather than cars. That would possibly illuminate the discussion about exactly the kind of damage and deaths caused by trucks on the road rather than private cars.
The hon. Gentleman talked about his main thrust being to increase the speed limit that HGVs have to adhere to, particularly on single-track roads. We have had the arguments before: because trucks have better braking systems, are more fuel efficient and are safer vehicles, they should be allowed to travel at a higher speed. Yet, presumably, any new regulation would apply to all vehicles, regardless of their age. Of course, they would all have to meet an MOT and the standards imposed by the Government, but to say that because the newest trucks are admittedly safer than older vehicles and therefore all vehicles should be allowed to drive at the higher rate is a dangerous argument.
The hon. Gentleman talked of drivers losing patience, being stuck behind HGVs on a single-track road. I agree that a there is curious cultural phenomenon in this country; even when I am not in a particular hurry to go anywhere and have all the time in the world to get from A to B, as soon as I sit behind a wheel and get held up at a traffic light, I suddenly start to feel impatient. I wonder if, instead of pandering to that irrational instinct, we should be encouraging drivers, particularly new drivers, to learn patience and to understand that it is not all about how quickly one gets from A to B, but how safely.
The hon. Gentleman talked about dangerous overtaking manoeuvres. That is something we should do everything we can to avoid, but we should not legislate to allow people to travel more quickly in order to alleviate their impatience. Surely the danger is that allowing such trucks to travel at 10 mph higher than they are currently travelling at is not going to make people less impatient? People will be more impatient to overtake, because 50 mph or 60 mph are never going to be enough for those drivers who see getting from A to B in the quickest possible time as the most important thing in their lives.
The idea that British motorists throughout the country are suddenly going to feel relaxed about following a truck travelling at 50 mph instead of 40 mph is bogus. That will never happen until we change the culture of driving in this country to emphasise how important it is simply to have patience and to understand that the most important thing is not how quickly one goes from A to B, but how safely.
At a later point perhaps we might discuss exactly how we can inculcate that new culture as part of the driving test. I will leave those comments for the time being.

Alistair Carmichael: That was a most insightful contribution from the hon. Member for Glasgow, South, offering us a rare glimpse into the upbringing that has made him the man he is today. A childhood spent playing with glass eyes explains so much all of a sudden.
I will deal first with amendments Nos. 55 and 56 in the name of the Conservative Front Bench and then speak to amendment No. 88 in my name.
I would be reluctant to support amendments Nos. 55 and 56, the effect of which is to lower the floor for penalty points from two to one, unless a more comprehensive case were made. The construction of penalty points and the way in which that system operates, from a minimum and with 12 totting up to a period of disqualification, make me reluctant to accept any radical tinkering. I have some reservations about the reduction from three to two, and a reduction from three to one would be a step more than I would be prepared to countenance.

Greg Knight: Is not what the hon. Gentleman just said a contradiction in terms? He referred to radical tinkering. Surely it is either radical or tinkering. It cannot be both.

Alistair Carmichael: The right hon. Gentleman may well be correct. For the record, I should say that it is a more radical change than I would be prepared to countenance.
Amendment No. 88 would retain the minimum of three points for restricted roads, which are, in effect, those with a 30 mph limit. I hope that the amendment will find some sympathy with the Minister. He spoke this morning about educating the motoring public and changing attitudes. He said that we must start thinking of speeding as unacceptable in the way that drink-driving is unacceptable.
We tabled the amendment because there is an attitude that just a bit over is somehow acceptable. We would say, and the Minister has already said, that in fact that is not acceptable. Roads that are designated as restricted tend to be in what are loosely called built-up areas. They are areas with housing, shops and schools, and many pedestrians and other non-motorised road users. In such circumstances, a reduction from three points to two does not send the correct signal. It would be preferable to retain a penalty point minimum of three for restricted roads—those with a 30 mph limit.
I wish to say a few words about new clause 13. From all that the hon. Member for North Shropshire said, I presume that it is a probing amendment. It is one that I was inclined initially to dismiss out of hand, but the hon. Gentleman made some good points about the nature of the vehicles that are on the road now and the way in which technology has advanced. Of course, that change is not restricted to heavy goods vehicles; it also applies to private cars.
However, before we took such a route, we would want more extensive and objective evidence than that which the hon. Gentleman supplied. The views of the Road Haulage Association and the Freight Transport Association—I believe that those were the two organisations that he mentioned—are interesting and instructive, but nobody would claim that they are disinterested bodies. There would be other reasons why they might welcome an increase of the sort that the hon. Gentleman proposes.
I also take issue with the hon. Gentleman on the question of impatient motorists being forced to pull out and overtake. His argument can play on both sides—in favour or against. He seems to be suggesting that the impatience of other road users would end because heavy goods vehicles would be allowed to go from 40 mph to 50 mph. That view displays the sort of optimism that I would normally associate with a Liberal Democrat. I do not really see any justification for it at all. I think that motorists will remain as impatient if they are stuck behind a heavy goods vehicle at 50 mph as they are at 40 mph. However, if they are going to overtake a vehicle travelling at 50 mph instead of 40 mph, that is a more difficult manoeuvre and the likelihood of a head-on collision to which the hon. Gentleman referred is that much greater.

Greg Knight: The Minister said earlier that he believed that speed limits should be appropriate if they are to command respect. One could extend that argument to cover all aspects of road traffic law, because in order that motorists respect it and, hopefully, adhere to it the law needs to be seen to have a cause. That theme should remain with us while we consider the rest of the Bill.
It is interesting that everyone who has referred to the new penalty points scheme has referred to it as a flexible points system, but the Government’s proposal is not a flexible points system at all; it is a movement from a single prescriptive system to a range of prescriptive alternatives for such offences. The courts will not have the opportunity to say that because of special circumstances they will not award penalty points. Parliament is saying that penalty points must be imposed, and that they shall be this or that depending on certain circumstances—whatever other circumstances there may be. I would have preferred the introduction of a genuinely flexible points system so that the courts could themselves determine whether, in a particular case, they should award penalty points or not.

Stephen Ladyman: The right hon. Gentleman might be mixing up the fixed penalty notices—for which the circumstances and the points will be prescribed—with the situation in which someone wishes to take their chances and go to court, either because they think that there are mitigating circumstances, or because they think that they are not guilty. If the court finds that person guilty, it has flexibility in how it punishes that person.

Greg Knight: I invite the Minister to come back further, because, under the proposals, if a motorist has exceeded the speed limit by a certain percentage, the courts will be told—I believe—how many points to impose.

Alistair Carmichael: There is an obvious caveat to what I am about to say, in that it is now quite some years since I dealt in practice with this area. My recollection, however, is that there is provision under either the Road Traffic Offenders Act or the Road Traffic Act for a proof to be held on special reasons, which would relate to the circumstances of the offence. That would allow the court to reduce the number of penalty points or indeed impose none at all. It was very rarely successful, because according to case law it is a fairly difficult standard of proof to meet. That discretion does remain available in exceptional circumstances, however.

Nicholas Winterton: I am not sure whether that is an example of the Lib-Lab pact, but I thought that the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire was seeking a response from the Minister.

Greg Knight: I gave way to the hon. Gentleman.

Stephen Ladyman: My understanding is that the court has flexibility, but I shall check with my lawyers and provide elucidation later.

Greg Knight: I am grateful to the Minister. My answer to the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland is that there are different types of flexibility. If the threshold of special reasons is set as high as I understand it to be, it is not really flexibility in the sense I argued. I think that there is a case for the courts to judge each circumstance on its merits, and I understand that they have to impose a certain number of penalty points unless there are exceptional circumstances that are very difficult to prove. I am not talking about the totting-up provisions but the awarding of points in relation to an offence.
I start from the position that I should like the whole system to be far more flexible, and therefore I support the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire. In fact, I wish he had tabled amendments to say, “Zero upwards”, because that would be true flexibility.
I support what my hon. Friend said about heavy goods vehicles. Before the second world war, they were required by law to have on their mud flaps the maximum speed that they were permitted to travel, which at the time was 20 mph. Some of those early  HGVs are on show in heritage museums and one can see the notice on the back saying that the vehicle is limited to 20 mph.
At some point in our history, the speed limit must have increased from 20 mph to 40 mph. The comments made by the hon. Member for Glasgow, South would have applied against moving from 20 mph to 40 mph. We are seeking a modest increase from 40 mph to 50 mph. Why should there be such an increase? My hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire said that the reason for the 40 mph limit is lost in the mists of time, but I think that it was introduced about the time when diesel engines were starting to be used in heavy goods vehicles. The Government of the day wanted to rid our roads of steam-driven lorries, which were dirty, noisy, heavy and damaged road surfaces. Yet the steam vehicles were capable of doing more than 40 mph and the diesel vehicles were not. In addition to the speed limit, the Government introduced an axle weight which penalised the owners of heavier vehicles.

Stephen Ladyman: Opposition Members are usually so thoroughly well informed that I am surprised that they are not aware that the restriction was first raised to 40 mph in 1963 and applied to all roads by the Motor Vehicles (Variation of Speed Limit) Regulations 1962 made under powers set out in the Road Traffic Act 1960. I thought everybody knew that.

Greg Knight: Can the Minister tell us what the speed limit was raised from? Did it increase from 20 mph, as I said, or 30 mph?

Tom Harris: Following the right hon. Gentleman’s logical argument that speed limits should be increased with technology, does he envisage any eventual upper limit to the legal limit at which trucks should be allowed to travel? In 100 years’ time, when we have rocket-powered trucks, will there be an upper speed limit of 500 mph?

Greg Knight: I would rather deal with the present and the immediate future, not the fantasy of a time when no one in this Committee will be alive to bother about it. [Interruption.] I will answer the hon. Gentleman’s point. I certainly think that a speed limit that relates to a specific class of vehicle should be kept under regular review. There are many reasons for saying that heavy goods vehicles should have lower speed limits than normal motor cars, not least because of their weight and their capacity to cause damage in an accident.
When the hon. Gentleman next finds himself stuck behind a heavy goods vehicle, I ask him to read what is printed on the back of it. Most of them now carry a sign saying “Warning. This vehicle has air brakes.” What does the hon. Gentleman think that means? Why does he think there is a warning to other motorists that an HGV has air brakes? It is because air brakes are more efficient than the standard type of brake. In 1963 when the 40 mph limit came in, all vehicles had the drum braking system, which has since been supplanted in motor cars by disc brakes, which are more efficient. Now, heavy goods vehicles have gone a stage further  and have air brakes, which are more efficient but far more expensive than disc brakes, which is why motor cars do not have them.
When considering a speed limit, we need to ask what progress has been made in enabling a heavy goods vehicle, which is a dangerous weapon if it is heading in one’s direction in certain circumstances, to be brought to rest within so many feet. Given the advent of disc brakes, it would not be unreasonable to increase the limit to 50 mph. In many cases, it could be argued that it would be unsafe to drive at 50 mph in a heavy goods vehicle or indeed a motor car, but that is a different point. We are considering whether it is appropriate to maintain a speed limit that was introduced in 1963, given that we have moved from drum brakes to disc brakes to air brakes. We could accept this modest uplift in the speed limit; many accidents are caused not solely by a vehicle’s speed, but by speed that is inappropriate given the road conditions.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire also referred to matters that are not as important as the safety of a vehicle and its ability to stop, but are nevertheless not without force. Heavy goods vehicles have moved from having three-speed standard gearboxes to four-speed and five-speed ones, and now their gearboxes can have eight or even 10 speeds. Such vehicles do not therefore travel in top gear; they use more fuel and are not as environmentally friendly as they might be.
In my constituency, dual carriageways are few and far between and in many circumstances on a fine day when the road is relatively clear, heavy goods vehicles could safely travel at 50 mph. At the moment, queues of holidaymakers travel at 40 mph because they cannot overtake the heavy goods vehicle ahead, which is travelling slower than it safely could because of the speed limit. That limit ought to go, and we ought to embrace the new clause.

Brian Iddon: Interestingly, I do not get many complaints about speeding offences. However, at my last surgery, one of my constituents came to see me to complain about the inconsistency of the penalty system. This guy had decided to pass his driving test and get a job. He became a self-employed landscape gardener. One day he was travelling into Blackpool, coming out of a 70 mph area to a 30 mph area, and, like many drivers, just took his foot off the accelerator to allow the car to slow down. He was caught by a speed camera at 36 mph, not far from the 30 mph sign, which he had seen, and he collected three points. Regrettably, the same thing happened as he went into Liverpool, and he collected a second three-point penalty for driving at 38 mph. His licence was revoked under the Road Traffic (New Drivers) Act 1995.
I ask the Minister for clarification on whether the variable points proposed by the Bill would apply also to probationary drivers, who under the 1995 Act remain probationary for two years. Would the same flexible penalty system exist for them? If this guy had gone to court and pleaded that he needed his vehicle  for his job, he might, given the speed he was doing on both occasions, have collected fewer than six points. That would have allowed him to have kept his vehicle and carried on with his landscape gardening job.
My constituent brought in a cutting from a local newspaper, which reported that a driver had collected points on his licence and was in danger of losing it because he had been doing 62 mph in a 30 mph zone. That was, of course, very excessive. The gentleman went to the magistrates court and pleaded with the bench that he could not afford to lose his licence because of his job. The magistrates did not ban him from driving and revoke his licence. When those two drivers are compared, it seems very unfair. There is no excuse for doing 62 mph in a 30 mph area, yet the driver who did that preserved his licence, while my constituent lost his. Does the flexible points system also apply to probationary drivers under the 1995 Act?

Stephen Ladyman: Let me begin with the notion of changing the power in the Bill to allow flexibility between one and six points. This might surprise the hon. Member for North Shropshire, but I agree that the idea is not without some merit. When I first became the Minister and realised that I had to take responsibility for this Bill, and started talking it through with my officials, I challenged them on whether we had got the range right at two to six points. I said to them, “This is only a power. We would have to come back to Parliament for an order, so why not give ourselves a power of between one point and 11?” One point would be for very minor offences and 11 for something so serious that the courts would want to say, “That’s it for you; you can’t commit any more offences, otherwise you’ll have a ban. We want to make the penalty points so serious that you can’t commit any more offences.”
 We talked about that suggestion for a long time, and we went round the houses. The first problem with that was that Parliament would feel that we were giving ourselves too much flexibility; it would argue that we should pull back on that. Secondly, we felt that if the court had given somebody 10 points because of a very serious offence, and a one-point penalty was allowed, they could still commit another offence before they got a ban. Yes, if someone got 11 points, then even a one-point penalty would be appropriate, but then we asked ourselves: “Under what circumstances would an 11-point penalty be given? How would we justify that to Parliament?” We found it very difficult to come up with answers to that. Likewise, we found it difficult to suggest a situation in which one point—which the hon. Member for North Shropshire proposes—would be appropriate.
Ultimately, an argument persuaded me not to table an amendment of my own to the Bill allowing a penalty of one point. That argument has already been highlighted several times today in Committee. We talked about the ACPO guidance, and at times we slipped into the error that some motorists slip into of thinking that the guidance means that the speed limit in a 30 mph zone is 34 mph, because if someone goes  at 34 mph they cannot be prosecuted or fined. The speed limit in a 30 mph zone is 30 mph. The reason why ACPO suggests that there ought to be some flexibility is that someone’s speedometer might be wrong. Well, it can be wrong upwards and it can be wrong downwards. If someone is doing 34 mph according to the speedometer, they might actually be doing 36 mph, in which case they will be fined for it and will have been driving very dangerously. Indeed, in a 30 mph zone, one might be driving dangerously at 34 mph.
If we introduced the notion of one penalty point, the only circumstance in which it would be likely to have any merit would be where one was at the limit of the ACPO guidance, or perhaps just 1 mph over it. The consequence of saying that the driver would then get only one point might be to encourage people to think that the ACPO enforcement level was actually the speed limit. In other words, someone could drive at 34 mph in a 30 mph area knowing that if they got caught it would be only one point—and what are the chances of getting caught, anyway? That was my concern. That would be the only circumstance in which we could try to justify providing for one point, and it would have the perverse consequence of encouraging people to go over the speed limit.
That is why ultimately I became convinced that the original Bill, offering a power of between two and six points, had got it right. That is the argument I put to Conservative Members in asking them to withdraw their amendments. They should ask themselves under what circumstances would they make one point available and what the perverse consequences would be. If they are honest with themselves and objective, they will probably come to the same conclusion that I did with my officials: that we should stick to two points as the minimum available.

Stephen Hammond: I am listening to the Minister’s argument with some interest. Can he explain why that exact same argument does not apply to two points? Logically, it could do so. I fail to see, therefore, why the courts cannot be given the greater flexibility.

Stephen Ladyman: We are talking not necessarily about courts but about the penalties that would be incurred through a standard penalty notice. The hon. Gentleman is right: a person has six strikes before he loses his licence, but at least two points are a significant dent on the licence and would make people realise that they can tot up eventually to 12 points. One point is too far from losing one’s licence. That is what this is all about.
The points on a licence mean two things to the average man or woman behind the wheel. First, they feel closer to losing their licence, which is a dramatic and harmful event, and, secondly, if they are being honest with their insurance company, believe me, the points hit the pocket far harder than the rather puny fines that we offer, even with the increased amounts in the Bill. Two points at a time are a sufficient reprimand to make it clear to people that they cannot go on for ever: they will ultimately lose their licence. One point  is just too far away from that. However, these are judgment calls, and two to six points is where my judgment rests.
I began by saying openly that the alternative argument has some merit. Having pondered it and reflected on the circumstances in which one would use it, I came to the conclusion that two to six points was the correct range to offer and that anything wider would either have perverse consequences or would not be acceptable to Parliament.
Amendment No. 88 again relates to restricted roads. I understand what the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland is getting at. The bottom line is that he thinks that in a 30 mph zone the minimum should be three points. When we carry out our consultation and then debate the matter when we seek our order, that may be exactly the conclusion that we will reach—that it should be three points in a 30 mph zone. We went out to consultation on the notion that in certain circumstances it could be two points in a 30 mph zone. As we are taking a power rather than enacting the power, it is reasonable to give ourselves the flexibility of two to six points, which is why I have encouraged the hon. Gentleman to seek to withdraw his amendment. Equally, I will understand if, when we come to drafting the order we decide to offer two points in a 30 mph zone, the hon. Gentleman will argue for three, and I look forward to debating with him.
The HGV issue is more complex. The day after I saw what can happen when an HGV travelling at speed hits something is probably not the best day to ask me to increase their speed limit. Opposition Members may have forgotten the dangers caused by HGVs, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South referred. I can tell the Committee that 25 per cent. of accidents in which people are killed or seriously injured on motorways are caused by or involve HGVs, although we are discussing single-carriageway roads rather than motorways.
The right hon. Member for East Yorkshire said how much brakes had improved. Yes, brakes have improved, but HGVs have got a heck of a lot bigger. It has been some time since my early scientific days when I had to do Newtonian calculations, but I have just done a quick, back-of-an-envelope calculation on the difference in energy between a 40-tonne vehicle travelling at 40 mph and a one-tonne vehicle doing 60 mph, which are the speed limits on our single-carriageway roads. The kinetic energy, which needs to be transferred into potential energy—in other words, the crash damage—if someone is hit by a 40-tonne truck doing 40 mph is 16 times greater than that if they are hit by a car doing 60 mph. That is why we must be very strict about speed limits for HGVs. They are enormous vehicles nowadays. A 40-tonne truck doing 40 mph has a heck of a lot of kinetic energy and will do an awful lot of damage if it hits someone. That is why 40 mph is probably still the right speed limit.
Will 40 mph always be the right speed limit on single carriageway roads? Hon. Gentlemen make a reasonable point when they say that that has been the speed limit for many decades and surely things have  changed. Things may change in future. At the moment, however, we believe that 40 mph is right, and other countries agree. In Germany, all rigid vehicles of more than 7.5 tonnes and vehicles drawing trailers that exceed 3.5 tonnes are restricted to 37 mph on single carriageway inter-urban roads. In France, the speed limit for articulated vehicles of between 3.5 tonnes and 12 tonnes and for articulated vehicles of more than 12 tonnes is also 37 mph on single carriageway roads. The potential of these huge vehicles to cause damage is massive. It is right that we restrict them to 40 mph.
I accept the argument that sometimes people get frustrated when travelling behind these vehicles. However, someone who gets frustrated travelling behind a lorry doing 40 mph would probably get equally frustrated travelling behind a lorry doing 50 mph. As the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland pointed out, at least it is easier to get past a lorry doing 40 mph than it would be to get past one doing 50 mph. In terms of reduced frustration, keeping HGVs to 40 mph is the safe thing to do.
I hope that my explanation will encourage hon. Members to withdraw or not press their amendments and that subsequently we can agree that clause 17 should stand part of the Bill.

Owen Paterson: We have had an interesting debate. On the question of flexibility, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond). The Minister’s arguments for two penalty points apply equally to one point. We can all provide anecdotes, but the anecdote from the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) about his constituent was very relevant. It was interesting to hear that the Minister and his officials had discussed a range going from one to 11 penalty points. That is attractive to me on the basis of the point that we made this morning that we do not want to alienate the vast mass of motorists. The constituent going into a 30 mph zone who had taken his foot off the accelerator and was slowing down is a classic example of someone who should be treated leniently, whereas the idiot doing 60 mph in a 30 mph zone should be dealt with much higher up the scale.
I very much favour more flexibility, and it was illuminating to hear that the Minister had had that discussion. There are real merits in our proposal to go down to one penalty point, because there are people in this country who are at risk of losing their licences and livelihoods and not because they are bad drivers. Travelling salesmen drive very long distances—I used to drive 1,000 miles a week—and, given the extra controls, are getting caught exactly as the constituent mentioned by the hon. Gentleman was.
There is a real problem in this Committee: we must address the country as it is. This is where I pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow, South. It would be lovely to teach the frustrated motorists to be patient on the single lane rural roads where I live, but let us live in the real world. That is simply not going to happen, and we have to be blunt about it. People are frustrated by truck drivers—

Tom Harris: And always will be.

Owen Paterson: I take issue with that. It would be a real safety gain if we were to increase truck speeds. The hon. Gentleman and I disagree fundamentally on this point, which makes for an enjoyable debate. He asked whether there are any examples of when speed increases have made a difference. I cannot resist giving him the evidence from a 1999 report by Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute. There is an enormous laboratory working on this issue—it is called the United States, which imposed the 55 mph limit. Stephen Moore said:
“In 1995 the Republican Congress repealed the 55-mile-per-hour federal speed limit law”.
At that time, there was strong lobbying that the decision would lead to an apocalypse on the roads of America and would cause 1 million additional injuries. Ralph Nader said:
“history will never forgive Congress for this assault on the sanctity of human life”.
This is absolutely relevant to the idea of increasing speed limits. It goes back to this morning’s discussion that the matter is not one of pure speed but of appropriate speed. Stephen Moore went on to say:
“Despite the fact that 33 states raised their speed limits immediately after the repeal of the mandatory federal speed limit, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported last October that ‘the traffic death rate dropped to a record low level in 1997’. Moreover, the average fatality rate even fell in the states that raised their speed limits. Higher speed limits have not caused one million more auto injuries.”
We must look at the world as it is and the roads as they are, not as we would like them to be. A report commissioned in British Columbia concluded:
“Posted limits which are set higher or lower than dictated by roadway and traffic conditions are ignored by the majority of motorists. The majority of motorists drive at a speed that they consider reasonable, and safe for road, traffic, and environmental conditions”.
On single lane, major rural roads, motorists are frustrated by trucks travelling at 40 mph. We must recognise that fact. It was very helpful of the Minister to dig around to find out why the 40 mph limit was set, but in 1963 the technology was very different. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire is absolutely right. Not only do we have disc brakes, we have ABS and different suspension systems. The Minister referred to the impact of whacking into a 40-tonne truck—that is what happens with vehicles in the oncoming lane. Thank goodness the Minister did not have an unpleasant incident yesterday. It was probably because the traffic was flowing and there were three lanes in each direction. The danger occurs on single lane roads, with traffic flowing in different directions.
The current limit is dangerous. It frustrates drivers, and no matter how much the hon. Member for Glasgow, South would like the world to be different, it is as it is. Large numbers of car drivers are trying to pass trucks, and because of speed cameras many truck drivers are being very careful. The limit is adhered to very strictly, which is dangerous. We must consider the roads as they are. We must discuss stick and carrot; both are required. I am afraid that a constant attempt at coercion will alienate more and more drivers.

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

On resuming—

Nicholas Winterton: I have allowed extra time because the Whip from Her Majesty’s Opposition was also a Whip on the Floor of the House for the last Division. I have therefore allowed longer than I perhaps should. However, we should recommence our debate. The hon. Member for North Shropshire was about to sit down, and I know that the Minister wants to respond to the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon).

Owen Paterson: I was just ending my comments, as I think we have had a thorough debate. We are minded, particularly given the interesting comments made by the Minister about an option of between one and 11 penalty points, to press our amendment to a Division. It is worth getting a feel from the Committee on the point of one.
I am intrigued by the idea that there was serious discussion in the Ministry about an option of between one and 11. That would have been a clever way of catching the hard core, as we discussed this morning, while being helpful to constituents, such as that of the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East, who were caught with their foot off the accelerator, coasted past the sign a little too fast and got caught. We have made our case on the issue of variable limits, and we are pretty clear.
The Minister’s response about HGVs was also helpful. It is fascinating that in the 21st century we are still binding trucks by an ancient decree that goes back to the 1960s, when technology was very different. I think we dealt with that fairly well. I may or may not have converted the hon. Member for Glasgow, South on the issue of speed; sadly, he is shaking his head. I did not think that we would. We have had an interesting exchange. I adhere strongly to the view that pure speed does not kill, but inappropriate speed does. In this case, we are talking about inappropriate speed.

Tom Harris: Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that speed limits should be decided more by the safety needs of a community than by the technical prowess or standard of a vehicle?

Owen Paterson: I think that that is a most helpful intervention. That is an incredibly important point. It is exactly what I am arguing. It is sensible to set limits—we have talked about the 85th percentile—at speeds that will be accepted by the vast majority of drivers. I cited the case this morning of Park lane, which was absolutely fascinating.

Tom Harris: To clarify, I meant the safety requirements of the community through which a road progresses, rather than the desires of the driving community. Surely what is important when it comes to  setting speed limits are the safety requirements of a village or town, rather than a speed limit based on how fast and how developed a lorry or car can be.

Owen Paterson: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. There are moments when one sees the ball come up, sees an open goal and wants to whack it in.
That is exactly what I feel coming from a rural area where 40 people have been killed on the A5, a single-lane road, in the past 13 years because the road is inappropriate and the speeds are inappropriate on that road. I feel for communities. Overtaking happens on that road because of frustrated drivers. The hon. Gentleman does not have to tell me about the impact on communities. Inappropriate speed damages communities.

Greg Knight: Is not it fair to say that no Opposition Member has suggested that if the speed limit for heavy goods vehicles were to be increased from 40 mph to 50 mph, that should override local speed limits in villages, which might be even lower than 40 mph?

Owen Paterson: My right hon. Friend is right. We went through those issues this morning in some detail. I am strongly in favour of varied limits. I cited the Canadian case in which limits outside schools are varied at different times of day. I think that major roads go through villages in my hon. Friend’s constituency in Yorkshire, so he will have relevant knowledge. The limit appropriate in some small villages will not be appropriate elsewhere. We did that to death this morning. We established clearly that limits should be set according to circumstances and that flexibility and variability are the name of the game.
In a last attempt to convert the hon. Member for Glasgow, South, I will say that setting an arbitrary limit on a big sign, in black writing with a red ring around it, does not solve the problem. There was a 30 mph limit in Park lane, and the average speed was over 40 mph. The limit was then changed to 40 mph and the average speed dropped below 40 mph.

Sally Keeble: I cannot remember the exact figures, but I think that it is right to say that the average speed of travel around London has not changed since Victorian times, or something like that. It is the impact of congestion, not of the judgments that people make about how fast they can go. If Park lane were clear, people would probably drive down it at 80 mph if they could. The figures that the hon. Gentleman is talking about are to do with what happens on the road. The argument is exactly the same as saying, “A speed limit of 30 mph was set across London and, look, people are not driving any faster than when they used to when they used horses and carts.” It is nonsense.
Mr. Patersonrose—

Nicholas Winterton: Before the hon. Gentleman replies, it appears to me that the Committee is regurgitating a debate that it has already had, and I hope that that will not continue.

Owen Paterson: I shall not be tempted to go further down that route. We have had an interesting debate. We think that there are merits in our amendment proposing replacing the reference to “2-6” penalty points with “1-6” penalty points. I should like to press that to a vote. I am also interested in testing the mood of the Committee on the issue of raising HGV speeds from 40 mph to 50 mph.

Nicholas Winterton: May I help the hon. Gentleman? He can certainly press amendment No. 55 in due course, when the Minister has replied, but if he wants a vote on new clause 13 that must be taken much later in our deliberations.

Stephen Ladyman: I realise that I was remiss in not responding to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East about whether the new arrangements will apply to new drivers. Yes, they will. Of course, new drivers are off the road at six points, not 12 points, so a six-point penalty for new drivers will potentially mean that they have only one hit. To be frank, I think that that is right. New drivers who are not responsible about speed, straight after passing the test, have only themselves to blame if they lose their licence and have to retake the test.
I repeat in response to the hon. Member for North Shropshire that I am not saying that there is no merit in the idea of greater flexibility. The attractiveness that I found in a wider range of penalty points turned out to be superficial. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will soon also realise that that attractiveness is only superficial.
As to HGVs I ask him to ponder a new fact between now and the time when the new clause is put to the Committee. The stopping distance in metres of a truck doing 40 mph is 39 m. The stopping distance of a typical car at 60 mph, which is the equivalent speed on a single carriageway road, is 51 m. When the speed of the truck is increased to 50 mph its stopping distance is 58 m. That is seven metres further than a car takes to stop on the same road. If the hon. Gentleman can still vote to increase the speed to 50 mph he is not the man I thought he was.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes 11.

NOES

Question accordingly negatived.
The Chairman, being of the opinion that the principle of the clause and any matters arising thereon had been adequately discussed in the course of the debate on the amendments proposed thereto, forthwith put the Question, pursuant to Standing Orders Nos. 68 and 89, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Question agreed to.

Clause 17 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 18 - Speed assessment equipment detection devices

Owen Paterson: I beg to move amendment No. 57, in clause 18, page 21, line 35, leave out ‘detection’ and insert ‘interference’.

Nicholas Winterton: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:
No. 58, in clause 18, page 21, line 37, leave out ‘detection’ and insert ‘interference’.
No. 59, in clause 18, page 22, line 6, leave out ‘detection’ and insert ‘interference’.
No. 60, in clause 18, page 22, line 23, leave out ‘detection’ and insert ‘interference’.
No. 61, in clause 18, page 22, line 33, leave out ‘detection’ and insert ‘interference’.
New clause 12—Amendment of Traffic Signs Regulation and General Directions 2002—
‘(1)The Traffic Signs Regulation and General Directions 2002 (S.I. 2002/3313) are amended as follows.
(2)In Regulation 4, after the definition of “excursion or tour”, insert—
“Fixed speed camera” means a camera of a type approved by the Secretary of State that is situated at a fixed site and that operates continuously or from time to time for the purpose of monitoring the speed of road vehicles and securing compliance with the speed limit in force at that site.”.
(3)After Regulation 58 there is inserted—
“Fixed speed cameras
59Every fixed speed camera shall—
(a)be painted bright yellow, and
(b)be clearly visible from the carriageway at which it is directed, and
(c)be adequately illuminated during the hours of darkness, and
(d)have affixed to it a clearly visible indication of the applicable speed limit.”.’.

Owen Paterson: We turn to an issue that attracted quite a lot of press attention after Second Reading, when it was revealed that the Minister and I both have devices in our cars to advise us where speed cameras might be located. It was also revealed that, sadly for him, the hon. Member for Glasgow, South does not  have one. He has six points and we have not—[Laughter.] We thought that there was a bit of a lesson there.
The Minister intervened on me in that debate. There was not a huge amount of time to go into it, but there are three possible devices, two of which we think are perfectly legitimate and one of which we think definitely is not. The purpose of our amendments is to make changes regarding the word “interference”. We do not have to spend an enormous amount of time on this, Sir Nicholas.
The device that I have has an updated memory and is effectively a global positioning system map. It tells me when, according to its memory, I am likely to approach a place where there is either a fixed camera or something called a “mobile”, and it squawks in a tiresome manner at something called a “blackspot”. I have never quite understood what a blackspot is, but I suspect that it is a section of road that is frequently patrolled by police cameras; I have not bothered to check what it is.
I do not see anything wrong with that device. There is no doubt that it has made me drive better in the two years since it was given to me as a Christmas present. I am more aware of where cameras are, and, above all, it stops me looking for them. This point was made to me by some drivers’ groups, and I touched on it in the last debate. There is a danger that when people have six or nine points on their licences, they are so paranoid about getting clocked by a camera that they frantically look for cameras everywhere. The device obviates things. It makes an audible sound—it bleeps in quite a tiresome manner—to tell me that I am within 100 yards of a fixed camera or one of the other spots I mentioned. It also has a digital monitor showing my exact speed. The variation between what the gadget and my speedometer say is interesting. The Minister has touched on this. There is quite a variance, sometimes as much as 3, 4 or 5 mph. I think this is a legitimate device; it has certainly helped me. I hope the Minister will endorse that this sort of device is legitimate.
There appears to be a second type of device, and mine may come under this category, because it occasionally starts bleeping. It did so on one occasion when I was going to an agriculture show in Cornwall, and I noticed that I was approaching a policeman with a speed gun. I have not gone into the technology of how it works, but it may count as a detector, and therefore be an illegal device, under the clause.
It seems to me that a detector of that sort, which picks up—by radar or whatever—that a monitoring gun is nearby is a good idea. We have detectors in our heads. You have them, Sir Nicholas, and so do I; they are called eyes. I think eyes are a good idea. I think seeing what is going on is a good idea. I think being told things by a detector is a good idea. I cannot see that there is anything illegitimate in having such a device in a car that informs the driver.
I recently talked to the heads of technology at Renault and BMW, and also to some people from DaimlerChrysler. We know that all car companies are looking into creating more intelligent cars that give  drivers more information, and what we are discussing now is probably rudimentary stuff compared with where we will be in five or 10 years. However, it seems to me that the more information a driver has, the less time he needs to spend actually assimilating information, so that, instead, he can just react to it. Interestingly, the head of technology at Renault said that cars today are rather like old Vickers Viscounts, where the driver has to do all the mechanics, absorb all the information and make the decisions. He thought that in five or 10 years’ time cars will be like an Airbus, in that the vehicle will basically be able to do things itself but the car manufacturers will give the driver all the information required so he can just make decisions.

Stephen Ladyman: Is the hon. Gentleman telling me that he is therefore in favour of intelligent speed adaptation being fitted in cars?

Owen Paterson: I am in favour of drivers being given as much information as possible, to make it easier for them to make decisions.

Stephen Ladyman: ISA devices would not just give information. Potentially, they can take over controlling the speed of the vehicle; they could take that decision away from the driver. If the hon. Gentleman is serious about wanting to free up the driver so he can concentrate on the road, I presume that he is also in favour of that technology.

Owen Paterson: That is a most helpful and important point. It is vital that the driver makes the decision. I discussed this matter at some length with the technologists from all three of those companies. Their intention is to create a car that provides the driver with information, but they were all emphatic that the decisions must be made by the driver. Otherwise the legal consequences—such as who is to blame if something goes wrong—will become extremely complex. It is a very important principle that the driver is responsible and makes the decisions, in the same way as the pilot of an Airbus is responsible for that; it could probably pilot itself, but the pilot must make the decisions.
We are talking about developments that will come to pass further down the road, and the devices we are debating will look pretty stone age in a few years, but I think that devices that either have a digital memory or actively detect are a good thing, because they help the driver. They tell the driver where other devices of a different sort are, and they remind him of the speed limits.
I am interested in how the Minister will respond to that point. Our amendments deliberately exclude devices that interfere. It must be completely wrong to have a jamming device that interferes with the legitimate surveillance activities of the police or other enforcement authorities. That is a very different sort of device, and there is no way that we would endorse that.
Our amendments are common sense, and they would improve the clause, because I suspect that as the clause currently stands what I have in my car, which is  a most useful tool, would be banned. Elements of it would count as “detectors.” We shall hear from the Minister about such detectors shortly.
New clause 12 is another common-sense measure, and it picks up on an intervention by the Minister on Second Reading. It is part of the confidence debate and goes back to our discussions this morning. Are speed cameras elements of a sort of Bourbon tax farm whose purpose is to pluck as many feathers out of Colbert’s goose as it can, or are they a tool for safety, in which case they should be as visible and as loudly proclaimed as possible?
Our contention is that cameras should be seen by the public as a safety measure and should be loudly proclaimed. They should be very visible. We recommend that they be painted bright yellow. I have a constituency case at the moment involving a construction site in Oswestry with big boards around the side that partially obscure a new camera. The case has caused a huge rumpus locally. It seems quite wrong that a camera should be hidden. It is all part of trust; we must keep faith with the large number of drivers that we talked about before. They should feel that the devices are not out to get them, but there to help them. Making cameras visible will do that; hiding them will do exactly the opposite.
Cameras should be clearly visible from the carriageway at which they are directed, and obviously, if they are to be visible, they should be yellow in daylight and illuminated at night. Most importantly, the relevant speed limit should be placed on them. When I come to London, I notice that people seem unsure of the speed limits when driving on roads such as the A40 or coming off the M1. Where the limit is normally 40 mph, I see people lurching below 30 mph because they are unsure of the limit at that point. It seems a perfectly common-sense measure to put a clear sign on the camera showing the speed limit at that spot. I hope that the Committee will support new clause 12 as a common-sense measure that was partly endorsed by the Minister on Second Reading.

Tom Harris: I mentioned on Second Reading that I would prefer detection devices to be made illegal. I shall come back to that, but I understand from what the Minister said at that stage that that is not the intention of the legislation. I notice in the explanatory notes that the Government will make a regulation clarifying that detection devices will continue to be legal and that only interference devices will be banned.
On that basis, it seems to me that amendment No. 57 is not necessary. On the other hand, it is always advisable to put into the Bill exactly what is meant. If the Government intend to continue to allow detection devices so that the Minister and the hon. Member for North Shropshire can continue to avoid speed cameras, they should accept amendment No. 57 rather than leave it up to regulations. However, that is obviously a matter for the Minister.
The hon. Member for North Shropshire must have been a hell of a salesman. He has almost convinced me that detection devices are worth purchasing. His  punch line—that he has no penalty points and I have six—was almost a deal-clincher, but I shall continue to resist it. None the less, I am absolutely convinced that the vast majority of people who have such devices—I exclude present company—use them as a warning so that they can slow down their vehicles when they hear the sound. For the rest of their journey, they break the law.

Owen Paterson: Good.

Tom Harris: The hon. Gentleman says the word “good” when I say that people are breaking the law, breaking the speed limit and endangering their own and other people’s lives. He says that that is a good thing—

Owen Paterson: I said “good” when the hon. Gentleman stated that the device makes people drive slower to be within the speed limit. That must be a good thing. We have talked all day about appropriate speeds and keeping to limits. Here we have a device that gives an audible warning to the driver and provides information: it tells him to wake up and that he is in an area with a speed limit. That must be a good thing.

Tom Harris: What is not a good thing is that drivers using such devices use them to drive within the speed limit only when they know that they are within range of a speed camera. That is not safe driving.
Finally, the Minister made a very interesting intervention in which he asked the hon. Member for North Shropshire whether he was in favour of speed inhibitor technology. I wonder whether the Minister would care to enlighten us in his winding-up speech as to whether he is in favour of it.

Alistair Carmichael: I can be similarly brief. There is something of a divergence between the terms of the Bill, the explanatory notes and my understanding of what was said on Second Reading when the Minister summed up, although I was not present at that time. In some ways, it seems that inclusion of the Conservative amendments would more accurately reflect the position that has been explained to the House.
I am rather with the puritans on this matter, which is about signals. The Minister told us at the beginning of the sitting that a different message had to be sent to the motoring public about the acceptability of speeding. The message that I get from devices that give an audible alert when a speed detection device is in the vicinity is not that it is wrong to speed, but that it is wrong to get caught. The only consequence of such devices is an encouragement to people to drive in excess of the speed limit because they think that they can do so with impunity.
There is an interesting point of jurisprudence here as to why we obey the law. When it comes to an offence such as speeding, the principal reason why people obey the law is fear of the consequences of getting caught. Allowing such devices encourages people to think that they can flout the law but not be caught for it.

Stephen Hammond: The hon. Gentleman tells us that he was not present on Second Reading. One of the points of interest raised in that debate was the fact that the information used by such devices is compiled using information provided by the Government on their website. As the Minister pointed out, the AA has published a map book that shows the locations involved. Indeed, the devices are presumably programmed on the basis that they can take information from the Government. I assume that the Government bless the idea of detection because they take the view that a repenting sinner is better than the sinner standing there. The Minister pointed out that the Bill seeks to prevent jamming devices from being used. I look forward to hearing him agree that interference is the word that should be used, rather than detection.

Nicholas Winterton: That was a rather long intervention.

Alistair Carmichael: As a good Presbyterian, I have views on sinners who repent, but I fear that if I favoured the Committee with them at the moment I might incur your wrath, Sir Nicholas. The hon. Gentleman is right that I was not present on Second Reading, but I was listening rather more carefully than he was to the hon. Member for North Shropshire. There are three species of device: those that jam, those that use the information and those that use some manner of radar to detect speed detection devices. It is the third species that is at issue. Nobody takes issue with the suitability or appropriateness of using information that is provided about the machines.

Lee Scott: The hon. Gentleman said that the devices encouraged people to speed and not get caught. Surely the same would apply to the fact that the backs of speed cameras are now painted yellow so that they are visible. That applies the same principle as the devices. Is he against that, too?

Alistair Carmichael: The hon. Gentleman’s logic is correct. He is right that painting speed cameras bright yellow illuminates them, which seems to involve the same approach as the device. I have more sympathy in that regard because of the practicalities of the situation. Everyone knows that where a speed camera is in position, certain chevrons are marked on the road. That is necessary to prove a speeding charge. If that is so, it probably makes sense that the cameras are visible to some degree.
Several hon. Membersrose—

Nicholas Winterton: Order. Before I call the next speaker, I wish to say that we are labouring a little on this subject. I am advised by the usual channels that certain progress is to be made today. We are hoping to reach clause 7. I am happy to sit here for whatever time is required, because I am merely a servant of the Committee, but I suggest that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee bear in mind what I have said.

Greg Knight: There are three types of devices. There is a jamming device, which prevents those seeking a reading from obtaining one. There is the detection  device that will detect when a signal is about to be directed at a particular vehicle and a device that relays information that is already in the public domain. The Minister is seeking to ban the first two devices on that list. No one would argue that it is wrong to ban a jamming device, the effect of which would prevent the police from carrying out their duty. We could argue that such a device would obstruct the police in the execution of their duty. Out of interest, however, I should like to know how many jamming devices the police say have interfered with their work to catch speeding motorists during the past 12 months, because I think that such devices are pretty rare.
It is curious that the Government want to ban the second category of device, the active alert device that warns a motorist that a signal is heading his way. If a signal is intended for a particular vehicle, why cannot the motorist have something in his vehicle that tells him that that is happening? I see no difference between the warning coming from a machine that makes a beep and from a passenger, perhaps a wife, girlfriend or friend, with a pair of binoculars who says to the driver, “By the way, on the bridge but next down the road, there is a white van and a man in a yellow jacket with something on a tripod. It might be a camera.” What on earth is the difference between someone who can look ahead and advise the driver what is coming up and a little device that does the same?
I am with the Government on class A. I am not so sure that there is a good case for banning the active device B, which is just informing the motorist. As for device C, where published information is relayed through GPS, I am pleased that the Government are not seeking to ban it because it would be ridiculous to make something unlawful in a motor vehicle that is lawful for a newspaper to publish, as many do week after week.

Stephen Ladyman: The hon. Member for North Shropshire is right. When we discussed these matters on Second Reading, we attracted a great deal of publicity. I was thinking of suggesting that he and I should go into advertising the legal devices, as a sort of Trinny and Susannah of the motoring world—or perhaps not.
The position has been encapsulated pretty well. As the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire said, there are three types of devices: those that jam; those that relay information already in the public domain; and those in the middle, which detect that surveillance might be about to take place. We are all agreed that devices that jam should be illegal. The Bill makes that the case. Even if not many such devices are around yet, the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire could bet his life that, were we to say that they were legal, hundreds of them would be on the market within weeks. They will be illegal; we are all agreed on that.
Most of us are agreed that devices that help to utilise information already in the public domain are a good thing. I have such a device in my car. First, it simply tells me when I am approaching an area where there is enforcement. Then it tells me when I am approaching  the camera itself. If I approach an area of mobile enforcement, the device cannot tell me where the camera is; it just tells me when I am entering that zone. The rationale is that the area in question will be one where we have already actively decided that there has been a history of people being killed and seriously injured and of speeding, and that those two things are related. Therefore, we will have effectively identified the enforcement area—called a blackspot by the hon. Member for North Shropshire—as an area where there is a high casualty rate, in which we want motorists to slow down.
Allowing motorists to know that they are entering such an area of high risk and that they should slow down therefore makes sense. That is why we paint the signs yellow. That is why we insist that the cameras are yellow and that they are put where they can be clearly seen—I will come to the new clause in a moment. That is why we publish on the Department and camera partnership websites where all those areas are, and why we encourage people such as those in the AA to publish a map of where all the zones are; they identify dangerous areas where we are open about the fact that speed surveillance and rigid enforcement is taking place. So detecting devices that tell one such things are perfectly legal and will remain so.
The controversial devices are those in the middle. The rationale is that there is a speed limit on every road in this country. There is no unrestricted road where one can travel at any speed one likes. There might be the national speed limit of 70 mph, or 60 mph on a single-carriageway road, a local speed limit or the 30 mph speed limit in a restricted area. There is a speed limit everywhere. We are not going to create a situation in which people are allowed to speed everywhere except where there is a camera. The police have to have open to them covert surveillance as well as overt surveillance. Overt speed enforcement and surveillance take place in the published areas, but the police have the right—indeed the duty—to enforce the speed limit on every other bit of road as well. They can most cost-effectively do so with the ability to do covert speed enforcement anywhere.
That is why a device that detects covert speed enforcement should clearly be made illegal. That is why we have drawn the distinction. We are happy with devices that tell people where overt enforcement is taking place, because those areas have a particular purpose—to slow people down and make the location safe. We are not prepared to accept devices that allow covert surveillance to be detected. People should be following the speed limit everywhere, and that is the only tool the police have available to ensure that speed limits are enforced everywhere. That is our rationale for the distinction between the three categories.

Stephen Hammond: I am listening carefully to the Minister, but following the logic of his argument, he should also be arguing that we should ban all the devices. The ones that he says he accepts are also slowing down people who are not abiding by the speed limit. What is the difference between overt and covert? The logic does not seem to hang together.

Stephen Ladyman: The logic is that there is a speed limit on every road, and drivers should be obeying it. However, there are certain roads on which there is a higher risk than on others, and on which we know that people have routinely ignored the speed limits. That has contributed to a high accident rate. We mark those roads clearly and say, “There is enforcement going on on these roads, and we encourage you to know about it in order to slow you down.” We do not want to create a situation in which somebody can speed with impunity on every other road because he thinks that the enforcement areas are the only ones in which he can be caught. That is why the police must have the opportunity to do covert speed surveillance and enforcement, and why a device that detects that surveillance needs to be illegal. That is our rationale, and I hope that I have convinced the hon. Gentleman.
On new clause 12, we have made it clear that speed cameras need to painted yellow and installed where they can clearly be seen. That is ensured through the guidance that we issued to the road camera partnerships—the rules for overt surveillance in published locations. We are clearly not going to restrict the police to using such techniques, because they may want to have covert surveillance in place in some areas. There has been press speculation that, once the new partnership arrangements are introduced in 2007, people will be able to go back to making the cameras grey. If they do, we will regulate to stop it, but I have no reason to believe that that will happen.
The intention of the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for North Shropshire is already covered in the instructions that we are giving to the camera partnership. There is one exception: the point about putting a speed limit on the camera. That is something that I explored thoroughly. The problem is that road traffic legislation says that the limit on restricted roads on which people have to do 30 mph is marked not by speed signs, except where they enter the zone, but by the fact that the streets are lit by lights 200 yd apart in England and Wales or, for some reason, 185 m in Scotland; I can only assume that the Scots have metricated before the rest of us. Our concern is that, were we to put what is called a repeater sign into a 30 mph area, the legislation would become moot and people might be able to argue that, as there was not a repeater sign in a 30 mph zone, they did not know the speed limit and should not be fined.
The cost of putting 30 mph repeater signs on every mile of restricted road would be horrendous. We therefore cannot put a 30 mph sign on the camera itself. We have said, however, that the people who deploy cameras must in future either ensure that drivers can see a camera and a speed limit sign in the same field of vision, or put a speed limit on the road as a reminder. Without incurring billions of pounds of extra expense on additional speed limit signs, that was the best compromise to ensure that people will know the speed limit when approaching a camera. I hope that, with those assurances, the hon. Gentleman will be prepared to seek leave to withdraw the amendment.

Owen Paterson: We have had an interesting and illuminating debate. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon; I do not quite see the logic of why it is wrong to give the driver as much information as possible. If a driver is made aware by a device that the police are around, that will probably have a knock-on effect for the rest of the day and for several weeks after, because it rattles people. I have talked to constituents in villages where there have been police checks. Such checks have a knock-on effect for years afterwards, when people say, “You want to watch out if you go to that village, because there are policemen.” That will be the impact of a detection device, and I do not agree with the Minister’s belief that people will whizz off as soon as they have gone past; the device will jolt them and remind them, as does the device that we currently have, which is basically just an electronic map.

Sally Keeble: If the hon. Gentleman believes in the need to reduce speeding, as he said he does, does he not accept that it is essential that the police should be able to enforce the speed limit? That includes detecting and catching people who break the speed limit, but the instruments that he mentions will help criminals to evade legitimate police detection.

Owen Paterson: I do not agree entirely with the hon. Lady, and until now, I was holding back from making the obvious point that there are far fewer traffic policemen around. The number has dropped from 9,201 in 1997 to 7,103, so the belief that universal policemen are enforcing all this law is, sadly, not true.
I do not adhere to the hon. Lady’s view that detection devices are interfering with the work of the police. The police are there to make sure that speed limits are enforced. If drivers are made aware that the police are carrying out enforcement activity, that is a good thing because it will put the frighteners on those drivers. Detection devices do not, therefore, interfere with the work of the police, but they encourage drivers to be more aware of the limits, and I believe that quite emphatically.
The lesson that I have drawn from my device is that the more one is aware of the limits, the better one will drive. The more information a driver has, the better, and that ties in with the research that I picked up from the major car companies. In a few years’ time, this debate will be seen as completely ancestral, because cars will give us all the relevant information, which will be tied up with satellite navigation and all the rest of it. To be honest, I therefore do not entirely agree with the Minister’s logic, and I believe that the amendment would improve the clause enormously.
On the colour of speed cameras and so forth, I was very much reassured when the Minister said that the current ruling to the road camera partnerships is that cameras should be painted yellow. Although I take on board his point about having to print hundreds of thousands of speed signs, he might like to take another point on board. When people come into towns that they do not know and see a camera but no sign—he says that there will be one a few hundreds after, and it would be a very good idea if, as he said, the speed could  be printed on the road—there is a noticeable tendency for them to slam on the brakes in case the speed limit is 30 mph. One sees that when one comes into places such as north London, where the limit is 40 mph.
As regards new clause 12, I feel better for having heard what the Minister said.

Nicholas Winterton: Does the hon. Gentleman wish to press amendment No. 57 or will he seek leave to withdraw it?

Owen Paterson: On the issue of speed devices, we will not press the amendment to a vote, although we leave the matter unhappily, because we are not convinced by the Minister’s argument. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 18 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 19 - Exemptions from speed limits

Owen Paterson: I beg to move amendment No. 62, in clause 19, page 23, line 23, at end insert—
‘(c)is operating blue flashing lights.’.
This is an interesting clause, and we sympathise with what the Government are trying to do, but I am concerned that it will heighten the divide between the 34 million drivers whom I have cited and those who enforce the law. I know that the clause applies to the fire and ambulance services, doctors, those delivering blood and so on, but my main concerns are about police cars.
There is a real danger of a feeling that there is one law for them and another law for us. Some of the statistics that I have dug out are astonishing. For a start, there is an enormous variation between the speeding cases in neighbouring forces. The most spectacular that I have found was in Lothian and Borders where last year 2,272 cars triggered speed cameras, but no action was taken against any officer. That cannot be doing much for the confidence of law-abiding motorists in Lothian and Borders. Of 78 unmarked cars that broke the limit, three were given £60 fixed penalties, with nine further cases outstanding.
On the other hand, in Dumfries and Galloway, which has a police force one-sixth the size of Lothian and Borders, 15 officers were fined for speeding. In the vast majority of cases, officers were exempt from fixed-penalty fines and prosecution because they were speeding in response to a 999 call or on other operational duties. Of the five Scottish forces that supplied details of police cars caught speeding, only 34.5 per cent. were fined, taken to court or still had cases pending.
Actually, Lothian and Borders had only the fourth highest rate of officers caught speeding. Essex had 3.26 incidents per officer, Bedfordshire had 2.04 and  Staffordshire had 0.91, which was tied with the Metropolitan police. I dug out those figures from the Press Association.
Public confidence is a problem. The RAC Foundation said that they believed that the results showed that some forces were overusing their exemption powers. The RAC’s Kevin Delaney, interestingly enough, a policeman for 30 years, said the following:
“The exemption rules are widely misunderstood by rank-and-file officers as giving them a carte blanche exemption from the speed limit when driving a police vehicle. That is clearly wrong and suggests that something is wrong with police driver training. Forces with the lowest number of camera triggers and higher proportions of officers refused an exemption have clearly taken a stand on this.”
We heard similar words from Neil Greig, who is head of policy in Scotland for the AA Motoring Trust:
“I think the vast majority of motorists understand that marked police cars responding to emergencies may be required to break the speed limit. But the number of exemptions given to police in some forces does concern me.”
There seems to be an inconsistency in the way in which the forces perform. I had a spectacular case in West Mercia where an officer was caught doing 159 mph in an unmarked police car, and he was caught by his own on-board video recorder.

Greg Knight: What car was it?

Owen Paterson: Perhaps my right hon. Friend wants to buy one. It was a new unmarked Vauxhall Vectra GSI. Apparently, it was being tested—that was the explanation. That does not seem sensible and cannot be a good idea. I have the highest possible regard for West Mercia and I spend a lot of time defending its right to continue as a force, but that sort of case damages the reputation of law enforcement.
Our amendment is simple and I will not waste a lot of time on it. We say simply that emergency vehicles, when driving above the speed limit, should have blue flashing lights. That is not much to ask, and it might help with public perception. We fully understand that there are times that do not pertain to normal drivers when those working for the fire, police or ambulance services, or those making blood deliveries have to go at top speed, above the legal limit. Under those circumstances there should be a blue flashing light so that all drivers are aware and can get out of the way of a 159 mph flyer.
I hope that the Minister has listened to my points. There is great variation in the way that police forces behave, and we are asking for a modest amendment to the clause to allow for a blue flashing light to show where those vehicles are and to allow the public to get out of the way.

Stephen Ladyman: I think that when the hon. Gentleman talked about a car doing 159 mph he almost made a sale to the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire. Love died, however, when he heard that it was a Vauxhall.
I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, and he is quite right that that type of case—or at least the way it was reported—caused a lot of furore and upset a lot of people. There was a feeling  that there was one rule for them and another for the rest of us. That is why we think that it is appropriate to have a clause in the Bill specifying when somebody is exempt from a speed limit. It clarifies, for example, that the officers involved must be in pursuit of their duties or in legitimate training. They cannot just be getting back to the station because someone told them that the kettle had been put on—there has to be a legitimate purpose.
I also understand what the hon. Gentleman was trying to get at with his idea that officers should have a blue light on. The point that I would make to him is that covert surveillance is an important part of what serious crime officers now have to do. Sometimes they have to engage in covert following of people who break the speed limit. If we were to require them to put a blue flashing light on their car, every time they were following some bad guys, I suspect the bad guys would pretty soon figure it out and do something about it.

Alistair Carmichael: The Minister will be aware that paragraph 66 of the explanatory notes referred to the amendments that were made to the Road Traffic Act 1988 by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. At the time of writing the notes, the amendments that were made by the 2005 Act had not been brought into force. Will the Minister say whether that is still the case, and whether his Department or the Home Office have any plans to bring them into force?

Stephen Ladyman: I do not immediately know the answer, so I shall either write to the Committee, or if inspiration comes to me later I may be able to provide it. Nevertheless, I hope that I have given sufficient explanation to the hon. Gentleman as to why we need to give discretion to the police, sometimes, to break the speed limit without their lights on. Those occasions should be very limited and should only apply to officers who have been trained for that purpose and are in pursuit of a serious objective. I expect chief constables to enforce that policy rigorously among their staff.
If it is of any further reassurance to the hon. Gentleman I can tell him that I am meeting Meredydd Hughes, the chief constable responsible for road policing, in the near future, and I undertake to remind him that Members expressed concern about the issue.

Owen Paterson: I am indeed reassured by what the Minister said. It would be particularly helpful if he put it across to his colleagues in the Home Office, and to the police, that the extraordinary variation in the way the police allow their officers to transgress is unfair. I understand the circumstance he mentioned when it would not be appropriate to operate blue flashing lights. On condition that he puts the message across, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 19 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Stephen Ladyman: On a point of order, Sir Nicholas. I wonder if you can advise me how I can bring it to the attention of the Committee that the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 amendment to section 87 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 came into force on 1 January 2006?

Nicholas Winterton: The Minister has done a splendid job. He has done what he set out to do and I hope that it is noted by all members of the Committee.

Clause 5 - Giving of fixed penalty notices by vehicle examiners

Greg Knight: I beg to move amendment No. 13, in clause 5, page 3, line 24, at end add—
‘()Schedule 1 shall not come into force until regulations introducing a code of practice for vehicle examiners have been produced by the Secretary of State and approved by resolution of each House of Parliament.
()It shall be a defence to any offence notified by a vehicle examiner to show that at the relevant time the examiner was in breach of the code of practice.’.

Nicholas Winterton: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 14, in clause 62, page 59, line 24, at beginning insert—
‘Subject to Section 5’.
No. 35, in clause 10, page 8, line 2, leave out ‘or vehicle examiner’.
No. 36, in clause 10, page 8, line 3, leave out ‘or vehicle examiner’.
No. 37, in clause 10, page 8, line 6, leave out ‘or vehicle examiner’.
No. 38, in clause 10, page 8, line 11, leave out ‘or vehicle examiner’.
No. 39, in clause 10, page 8, line 14, leave out ‘or vehicle examiner’.
No. 40, in clause 10, page 8, line 16, leave out ‘or vehicle examiner’.
No. 41, in clause 10, page 8, line 21, leave out ‘or vehicle examiner’.
No. 42, in clause 10, page 8, line 22, leave out ‘or vehicle examiner’.
No. 43, in clause 10, page 8, leave out lines 33 to 35.
No. 44, in clause 11, page 9, line 18, leave out ‘or vehicle examiner’.
No. 45, in clause 11, page 9, line 21, leave out ‘or vehicle examiner’.
No. 46, in clause 11, page 9, line 39, leave out ‘person’ and insert ‘constable’.
No. 47, in clause 11, page 9, line 40, after ‘requirement’, insert ‘must be in uniform.’.
No. 48, in clause 11, page 10, leave out lines 1 and 2.

Greg Knight: I am well aware how, at this hour, harmony can descend into acrimony. We have all had a long day. The Minister has probably had the longest day of us all, as I understand he had an early-morning meeting and then oral Questions, so Opposition Members are grateful to him for his emollient and  conciliatory approach. I hope that that will continue until the end of our proceedings. I hope not to delay the Committee too long.
Amendment No. 13 would require the Secretary of State to introduce a code of practice for vehicle examiners. That is necessary if vehicle examiners are to have the powers envisaged by the clause and schedule 1. I think that we all accept that anyone employed as a vehicle examiner will have a broad and fairly detailed knowledge of motor vehicles, but why should such a person have any knowledge or experience of the rules of evidence or the need for justice and a sense of fairness when interfacing with members of the public?
A code of guidance would also focus the vehicle examiner’s mind when he is carrying out an examination. For example, I would argue that a vehicle examiner who is examining a vehicle by the roadside should not carry out any test for which that vehicle is exempt under the MOT testing regulations. The Minister may envisage, for example, that in future vehicle examiners will have the power to conduct emission checks. I am sure that he is aware that motor vehicles constructed before 1975 do not have the gases from their exhaust analysed. It is merely a visual check: is the vehicle belching out black smoke or is it not? If it is not, it has passed the test. One wonders, therefore, what code the vehicle examiners will operate under.
I hope that when the Minister replies he will say that he envisages a code of practice being in place. For example, a vehicle may be found to be defective and a member of the public may indicate to the vehicle examiner some genuine, mitigating facts. If a motorist is stopped by a police officer, after the interview with the motorist has been concluded, the officer will make up his notebook, which may be used in any subsequent court proceedings as a contemporaneous record of his discussion with the driver of the vehicle. In the absence of a code of practice, there will be no duty on a vehicle examiner to behave in a similar way.
When and where will the vehicle checks be carried out? Again, there should be some guidance to those carrying out the tests that, as far as possible, they should avoid adding to congestion by carrying out the checks on main arterial routes, particularly during holiday periods, certainly in parts of my constituency.
During the passage of earlier legislation that gave traffic wardens more power, the Government conceded the force of the argument that there should be a code of conduct for traffic wardens, which I think is about to be published. If vehicle examiners are to be given this greater power, they too should be subject to a code of conduct. It could act as a check list to the vehicle examiner, it could ensure that he follows a set routine when examining a vehicle and dealing with the motorist and it could include a requirement that anything said by the driver at the scene is recorded.
On Second Reading I asked the Minister a question that he did not answer. I hope that he will answer it today. If the Bill passes into law in its present form, will the vehicle examiners have the power to stop vehicles?

Stephen Ladyman: They already have the power to stop vehicles. The anomaly is that although they can stop vehicles at the moment, they must call a policeman if they want to issue a penalty notice or take proceedings against someone. The clause simply fixes that anomaly. They will not only be able to stop vehicles but to issue penalty notices. When doing so, they will have to follow the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, as policemen do.

Greg Knight: So the Minister is saying that in contrast with current practice—a police officer causes the motorist to pull off the road, perhaps into a lay-by, to have his vehicle examined—after the passage of the Bill, a police officer will no longer need to be present.

Stephen Ladyman: In the case of heavy goods vehicles, particularly foreign lorries, which cause concern to many of us in this place, a Vehicle and Operator Services Agency officer normally pulls over the vehicle and inspects it. The policeman needs to be there only if a penalty notice is to be issued.

Greg Knight: The Minister’s answer reinforces the need for a code. In the present situation, a police officer is standing by to listen to what is said and observe how the vehicle is examined and how the motorist reacts. If the checks are to be carried out in the absence of police, what duty will the vehicle examiner be under to record accurately what the driver might say when it is put to him that his vehicle is defective? As the courts tend to view with suspicion a mitigating fact that is raised in court but was not raised at the scene of the crime, vehicle examiners ought to be under some duty to make a note of any remarks made by the driver that relate to the offence with which he is likely to be charged. Will the Minister tell us how on earth that requirement can be implemented if guidelines are not to be introduced?

Alistair Carmichael: I share many of the right hon. Gentleman’s misgivings. The crossover between offences within VOSA’s remit and those that are the responsibility of police officers should not be underestimated or blocked in any way. It is often the case, for example, that an initial stop relating to some construction and use regulation, which is the sort of thing that VOSA officers look for, will bring other matters to light—perhaps driving without insurance or while disqualified. Surely such matters would require the immediate input of a police officer. To divorce the police and VOSA in that way causes me some misgivings.
As the right hon. Gentleman said, VOSA officers presumably will not be under Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 obligations. Will the Minister confirm that? In Scotland, given that we do not have PACE, all officers will be subject to the same duties of fairness.

Stephen Ladyman: I assure the hon. Gentleman that VOSA officials already prosecute. Anyone prosecuting has to conform to PACE. That is true of VOSA officials as much as it is of the police.

Alistair Carmichael: I am aware that under the system in England and Wales VOSA brings its own prosecutions. That is different in Scotland; VOSA reports to the procurators fiscal for a particular sheriff court district.
My personal experience as a procurator fiscal depute was that the police, because they daily provided good quality reports, were normally beyond reproach with their content, but other reporting agencies, which did not have the same range and depth of experience, often tended to supply us with reports that were not of the same quality—if I may put it like that, with a degree of delicacy. I feel uneasy that their role in prosecutions is to be extended as a result of the Bill.
I have a further concern. In the explanatory notes, unlike the fixed penalty system, which is available to the police and others, this system is to be operated by the Minister’s Department. I do not see any good reason for setting up a separate and parallel bureaucracy when the existing system seems to work fairly well.

Stephen Hammond: I support the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire. I too have considerable concerns about introducing the clause, which effectively introduces schedule 1, without testing the competence of the examiner—in a completely new extension of his areas of responsibility—in the rules of evidence and of justice. In that regard Conservative Members are much exercised by the movement away from the status quo. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland has just made the argument for the status quo.
Amendments Nos. 35 to 48 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire and me would maintain the status quo. We are concerned why the Minister thinks that we should not be wary of enabling more people to be put into a position to prosecute or penalise motorists. We would be grateful if he explained why another group of people doing that more extensively than they can do so now is a good idea.

Stephen Ladyman: I am just taking my lead from the previous Government, who established the legislation that appoints such people.

Stephen Hammond: Those people were appointed to stop and search vehicles. In almost all cases at the moment, the police are present to issue a fixed penalty notice. If power is to be extended to vehicle inspectors, we want to know what supervision there will be of those people. What standards will be set? There is some guidance, but who will monitor the inspectors to ensure that they comply with the rules of PACE? To what extent will there be someone to compare the practice with that elsewhere, so that we get a uniformity of standard, as with the current system where the police issue the fixed penalty notice?
As with speed cameras—which we discussed in great depth today—there will be great suspicion that an agency with the power to levy penalties will be notified to do so in order to fund its own activities. In short, we will have another self-financing regulatory authority. What guarantees is the Minister able to give us that  VOSA’s operations will not be dependent on funding achieved from the penalties that it imposes? I would also be keen for the Minister to give us some reassurances about how the tests of competence are to be put in place.
I will not detain the Committee much longer. Opposition Members are considerably concerned that under a fixed penalty regime that is not operated by the police, discretion will go out of the window. I hope that the Department does not intend that every breach of every regulation will be governed by schedule 1, and that a fixed penalty will automatically be imposed. We support the power of VOSA to stop, but we are deeply concerned about why the Minister thinks it is a good idea to extend the powers into areas where examiners have no real competence. We seek reassurances on that.

Stephen Ladyman: I disagree with the hon. Gentleman that examiners have no real competence. First, who is responsible for appointing VOSA vehicle examiners and ensuring that they are properly trained? Under legislation passed by the previous Government, they are appointed by the Secretary of State, so responsibility ultimately lies with the Secretary of State. VOSA, the agency that examiners work for, is an agency of the Department for Transport, so it reports to me. It is my job to make sure that standards are maintained. The examiners can already stop and inspect vehicles without the help of a police officer. If they feel that a court prosecution is necessary, they can submit evidence under PACE and proceed to prosecute. The one thing they cannot do at present is issue a penalty notice—a standing penalty. That is what we are trying to change.
All the measures in the Bill—I suspect that they will get wide support in the Committee—for dealing with foreign lorry drivers who have substandard vehicles or who commit road traffic offences depend on our ability to issue a penalty notice when the vehicle is detected as having committed an offence, and then to take a deposit from the driver equivalent to the potential fine that they might have to pay if found guilty. If we do not give VOSA officers the power to issue fixed penalties, that arrangement simply will not work, and the thousands of lorries that VOSA examiners already stop and examine will go unpunished. That would be a rather perverse consequence of a Conservative party amendment.

Stephen Hammond: We shall indeed discuss the financial deposits later, and we will ultimately support that approach—and, I hope, tighten it up. However, I am not sure whether I agree with the Minister that not giving the powers to VOSA examiners will pervert that.
The Minister started to give reassurances in respect of the fact that at present he regulates VOSA examiners. He regulates them for their competence to examine vehicles, not for their competence in respect of the rules of justice or evidence. We now have the prospect of an extension of their powers. They can proceed to prosecution, but at present they have no powers to issue a fixed penalty notice.

Stephen Ladyman: They do not have the powers to issue a fixed penalty notice at present. That is the distinction between VOSA and the police. However, under the powers in this Bill that we wish them to have, they will be able to issue such a notice. A separate code of conduct is not in my view required, because when issuing a fixed penalty notice they will have to comply with the requirements of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 in exactly the same way as do the police. Therefore, it is the Secretary of State’s job to ensure not only that they are adequately trained in vehicle examination, but that they understand that Act, PACE and all the other statutes with which they have to comply when issuing these notices.
The point I make to Opposition Members is that these people are already responsible for stopping and inspecting thousands of vehicles. If we are going to insist on their having a policeman present whenever they do so, we will take police away from other roads policing activities and we will hamstring the very measures that we will debate later in the Bill.

Greg Knight: We are not arguing that the police should continue to have a presence, but what assurance can the Minister give that, once their presence is removed, vehicle examiners will behave in as just a way as police officers would when issuing fixed penalty tickets? How are vehicle examiners to know about the rules of evidence? Will they be sent on a course where the rules will be explained? Will they be told that they have to make a contemporaneous note? We were hoping that he would deal with those issues in responding to the debate.

Stephen Ladyman: My argument is that vehicle examiners already work unsupervised by the police. They stop and inspect thousands of lorries, and they prosecute people if necessary. At present, they prosecute through the courts, so one could argue that ultimately the courts will measure their standards of training and compliance with the legislation.
In the future, vehicle examiners will issue fixed penalty notices. People can contest those notices in the courts. If they believe that they have been given one inappropriately, or if the rules of evidence or any other  rules have been breached, they can argue their case in court, and it will become clear whether the VOSA examiners are failing in their duties.
Perhaps there has been a misunderstanding among Opposition Members about what we will encourage examiners to do. We simply want them to have the same power to issue a fixed penalty notice that the police have in order to ensure that the police are efficiently engaged in clamping down on some of the serious breaches of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 and, through the deposit scheme, in dealing with the problems associated with foreign drivers who avoid penalties. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Greg Knight: I am disappointed by the Minister’s reply. He downplays the importance of the presence of a police officer, which is required at present. On every occasion when I have witnessed vehicles being pulled over for examination, it is a police officer who has flagged down the vehicle and directed it into the inspection area. I wonder whether as many drivers will be willing to pull over for some character in overalls who may or may not have an authority card in his pocket. The Minister is misjudging the importance of a police officer in the context of vehicle examinations.
The Minister has done little to reassure me that the vehicle examiners will be anything other than swinishly ignorant of the niceties of dealing with someone who is about to be charged with an offence. At present, it is the police officer who would interface with the driver. Nevertheless, I would like to reflect on what the Minister said and perhaps use the gap between this Committee and Report to seek to bring further evidence to his attention, as I still believe that the amendment has merit. I would like to return to the matter on Report, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Clauses 6 and 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Further consideration adjourned.—[Mr. Roy.]

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-five minutes to Eight o’clock till Thursday 23 March at Nine o’clock.